MADAME BOVARY: The Novel -- Liquid Motif

[Peppermill]

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Choisya wrote:

These romantic mentions of Switzerland, mountains etc. reminded me of Radcliffe's gothic novel Udolpho which was written in the 1790s and which Flaubert may have read, as it caused quite a sensation. There were many descriptions of 'sublime' landscapes in Udolpho and I think MB is also referencing the sublime here.

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I was almost surprised not to find Radcliffe among the names Emma read, but, then, I don't know if Udolpho was available in French and I would presume Emma would not have understood English, despite her education.

[Peppermill]

I promised to add these from Nabokov (I was almost tempted to make this still another thread):

Equine Theme in Madame Bovary

"To pick out the appearances of the horse theme amounts to giving a synopsis of the whole of Madame Bovary.  Horses play a curiously important part in the book's romance.

1.      "The theme begins with ‘one night [Charles and his first wife] were awakened by the sound of a horse pulling up outside the door.' A messenger has come from old Rouault, who has broken his leg.

2.      "As Charles approaches the farm where, in a minute he will meet Emma, his horse shies violently, as if at the shadow of his and her fate.

3.      "As he looks for his riding crop, he bends over Emma in a stumbling movement to help her pick it up from behind a sack of flour. (Freud, that medieval quack, might have made a lot of this scene. [Horses are a symbol of sexuality in Freud.  Ed.])

4.      "As the drunken guests return from the wedding in the light of the moon, runaway carriages at full gallop plunge into irrigation ditches.

5.      "Her old father, as he sees the young pair off, recalls how he carried off his own young wife years ago, on a cushion behind his saddle.

6.      "Mark the flower Emma lets fall from her mouth while leaning out of a window, the petal falling on the mane of her husband's horse.

7.      "The good nuns, in one of Emma's memories of the convent, had given so much good advice as to the modesty of the body and the salvation of the soul, that she did ‘as tightly reined horses do-she pulled up short and the bit slid from her teeth.'

8.      "Her host at Vaubyessard shows her his horses.

9.      "As she and her husband leave the château, they see the viscount and other horsemen galloping by.

10.   "Charles settles down to the trot of his old horse taking him to his patients.

11.   "Emma's first conversation with Léon at the Yonville inn starts with the horse topic.  ‘If you were like me,' says Charles, ‘constantly obliged to be in the saddle-'  ‘But,' says Léon, addressing himself to Emma, ‘how  nice to ride for pleasure....'  How nice indeed.

12.   "Rodolphe suggests to Charles that riding might do Emma a world of good.

13.   "The famous scene of Rodolphe and Emma's amorous ride in the wood can be said to be seen through the long blue veil of her amazon dress. Note the riding crop she raises to answer the blown kiss that her windowed child sends her before the ride." {Note the window motif, too.}

14.   "Later, as she reads her father's letter from the farm, she remembers the farm-the colts that neighed and galloped, galloped.

15.   "We can find a grotesque twist to the same theme in the special equinus (horse-hoof-like) variety of the stableboy's clubfoot that Bovary tires to cure.

16.   "Emma gives Rodolphe a handsome riding crop as a present.  (Old Freud chuckles in the dark.)

17.   "Emma's dream of a new life with Rodolphe begins with a daydream:  ‘to the gallop of four horses she was carried away' to Italy.

18.   "A blue tilbury carriage takes Rodolphe away at a rapid trot, out of her life.

19.   "Another famous scene-Emma and Léon in that closed carriage.  The equine theme has become considerably more vulgar.

20.   "In the last chapters the Hirondelle, the stagecoach between Yonville and Rouen, begins to play a considerable part in her life.

21.   "In Rouen, she catches a glimpse of the viscount's black horse, a memory.

22.   "During her last tragic visit to Rodolphe, who answers her plea for money that he has none to give her, she points with sarcastic remarks at the expensive ornaments on his riding crop. (The chuckle in the dark is now diabolical.)

23.   "After her death, one day when Charles has gone to sell his old horse-his last resource-he meets Rodolphe.  He knows now that Rodolphe has been his wife's lover.  This is the end of the equine theme.  As symbolism goes it is perhaps not more symbolic than a convertible would be today."

[In the very end, after expounding at length, does Nabokov seem to downplay the significance of the equine theme?  Numbering has been added.]

 

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IBIS wrote:

Picking up the horses' motif thread, I'm reading in part 2, chapter 9... where Charles becomes the unwitting accomplice to Emma's infidelity...

Rodolphe offers to take Emma horseriding; she demurs at first. But Charles, blind to Rodolphe's intentions, and hoping to improve Emma's health with exercise, insists she accept.

He even writes to Rodolphe himself to arrange the horse ride. On the ride, Emma and Rodolphe become lovers.

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bartzturkeymom wrote:
There's horses - racing, conveyance, etc. And then there are the people who interact with horses. Emma was very disappointed that the groom only came, did his work and left because she would have liked to make him her friend. It was also the horses racing past them after the ball which occasioned them finding the cigar holder that she swiped from Charles when he wasn't looking.

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[IBIS]

Thanks, Pepper, for those equine motifs from Nabokov. I love the asides re Freud, that medieval quack.

Hilarious! 

[Peppermill]

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IBIS wrote:

Thanks, Pepper, for those equine motifs from Nabokov. I love the asides re Freud, that medieval quack.

Hilarious! 

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(Bold added!)

And very Nabokov!  I wonder if we have anyone on these boards who ever took a literature course from him.  I enjoy looking at the pages of his scratched over notes, even if they aren't totally legible in reproduction.

[chadadanielleKR]

As a matter of fact,  "Udolpho" has been translated in 1797 by the Comtesse Victorine de Chastenay (1771-1855), by the way:

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Peppermill wrote:

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Choisya wrote:

These romantic mentions of Switzerland, mountains etc. reminded me of Radcliffe's gothic novel Udolpho which was written in the 1790s and which Flaubert may have read, as it caused quite a sensation. There were many descriptions of 'sublime' landscapes in Udolpho and I think MB is also referencing the sublime here.

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I was almost surprised not to find Radcliffe among the names Emma read, but, then, I don't know if Udolpho was available in French and I would presume Emma would not have understood English, despite her education.

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a very interesting character, and it was so successful that  the book was published again 6 times until 1839. Therefore MB might have read it...

[IBIS]

Many critics accused “Madame Bovary” for having too many metaphors and similes. According to them, their approximation to reality compromised Flaubert's realism. He took this criticism seriously, and consciously avoided them in his later works. Here’s a partial list that I enjoyed stumbling across in my reading….

Charles's mother: "… she became, as she grew older (as wine left uncorked will turn into vinegar), morose, shrewish, and irritable."

Heloise,Charles’ first  wife: "… she was plain, as dry as a chip and as spotty as a fig-pudding."

Wedding: "The procession, at first keeping well together, resembled a colored scarf as it undulated through the countryside."

Emma's father: "He felt as gloomy as an empty house."

Landscape:  "… steep lanes where the trees hung over like the hood of a cradle"

Emma in the convent  "… she did what horses do when you hold them in too tight: she pulled up short and jerked the bit from her mouth."

"Charles's conversation was as flat as a street pavement."

Charles’ embrace: "It was just another habit added to the rest, like a humdrum dessert rounding off a humdrum dinner."

Yonville: "thatched roofs, like fur caps pulled down over the eyes"

Emma’s weak will:  "Her will, like the veil of her bonnet, is tied to a string and flutters in every wind."

"The wings of the peasant women's bonnets flapped up and down, fluttering like white butterflies on the wing."

Old farm woman: "All her life she had been used to animals, and she had grownas placid and as mute as they." 

Emma in love: “She could feel the blood suffusing her whole body like a stream of milk."

“For her something had happened, something more tremendous than if the mountains had been shifted from their base."

"It was like a spring morning coming into his room."

"She would halt, paler and more tremulous than the poplar leaves that fluttered above her head."

Emma on Charles’ failure: "… her dreams, falling like stricken swallows in the mire"

"This extraordinary and wholly unexpected exclamation fell upon her like the thud of a leaden bullet on a silver plate."

Emma when reading Rodolphe’s letter: "She emptied the basket, tore away the leaves, saw the letter, opened it, and then, as if a fire were raging at her heels, made, in an agony of terror, for her room."

"… that horrible piece of paper that rattled like a piece of sheet-iron in her hand."

"Her heart knocked against her breast like great blows from a sledge-hammer."

"…the floor seemed to be slanting downwards like a vessel heeling over to the wind"

Leon's doubts: "… at the sound of her step, he would feel himself wilting, like a drunkard at the sight of the bottle"

Bailiff's inventory: "Her whole mode of life, with all its intimacies and secrets, was laid bare, like a corpse undergoing a post-mortem examination"

Emma's coffin: "… on and on it went, with little jerky movements like a boat in a choppy sea pitching at every wave"

Charles’ love of Berthe: "… that delight had its alloy of bitterness, like an ill-made wine that smells of resin"

I'm not sure how metaphors and similes compromised his realism and naturalism, but I do enjoy the imagery. 

[dulcinea3]

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IBIS wrote:

Wedding: "The procession, at first keeping well together, resembled a colored scarf as it undulated through the countryside."

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Great list, IBIS!  I absolutely loved the one above in particular!

[IBIS]

Has anyone also noticed the abundant references to flowers in “Madame Bovary”? As an avid gardener, I couldn't help but notice that flowers come up again and again.

Flaubert consistently uses flower imagery in the novel. For example, Rodolphe . . . at the moment when he is about to abandon Emma, opens an old box in which he keeps his love letters from various ladies, and as he does so, ‘an odor of withered roses emanated from it’. Rodolphe’s insincerity to Emma is expressed in the scent of long-dead roses.

Flowers appear at the ball at Vaubyessard. Emma wears “three bouquets of pompom roses” on her dress. We also see “gentlemen with carnations in their buttonholes. . . talking to ladies round the fire”. The hair of many of the women at the ball “bore crowns, or bunches, or sprays of myosotis, jasmine, pomegranate flowers, [and] wheat sprays”. The red of the carnations in the buttonholes of the men is echoed in the red of the myosotis and pomegranate flowers.

When Emma meets her lovers, the flowers described set the tone for the entire scene. Rodolphe’s scenes are short, but very telling, if we pay attention the to flowers which appear in them. For instance, when Emma meets Rodolphe at the agricultural fair, they see some daisies. Rodolphe gives away his intentions when he says “Here are some pretty Easter daisies, and enough to provide oracles for all the lovers in the vicinity. . . . Shall I pick some?”. Emma replies, “Are you in love?”.

The next time Rodolphe appears, Emma places some roses in a vase. These roses set the tone of warning which Emma doesn’t get. When she expresses her undying love for him, he replies hesitantly.

Léon is also described by floral motifs. Before Léon meets Emma at the cathedral, he looks about the street and sees “the flowers that bordered the pavement: roses, jasmines, carnations, narcissus, and tuberoses”.

During their tour of the cathedral, Léon and Emma “breathed in the perfumes of the full-blown carnations and roses in the large vases”.

Emma, however, doesn’t seem to be surrounded by flowers herself. In places in the scene where flowers might be, we instead see artificial things. Elegant paper-and-cardboard constructions adorn her wedding cake, and the guests wear ribbons and medallions instead of the usual corsages.

Even Emma’s bouquet is made of paper flowers. “One day, when, in view of her departure, she was tidying a drawer, something pricked her finger. It was a wire of her wedding bouquet. The orange blossoms were yellow with dust and the silver-bordered satin ribbons were frayed at the edges. She threw it into the fire. . . . The shriveled paper petals, fluttering like black butterflies at the back of the stove, at last flew up the chimney."

The flowers are made of paper. The floral symbol of her marriage is artificial. I can't help but wonder if their artificiality foreshadowed her marriage to Charles.

[chadadanielleKR]

I just found an interesting link : MB manuscripts (sorry, in French) at which you could have a look.  It is related to the making of MB and it comes from the university of Rouen, Flaubert centre (Normandy).

 On the left there is a list of different words: just click on them and you get  nice pictures which were in the first editions of MB. If you know a bit more  French, you can get to the first drafts of MB, maps of the differents towns Flaubert created in MB, all kind of interesting info. Actually, just click everywhere and you'll understand more or less what you see...

[IBIS]

Danielle, thank you for this interesting link.

I liked seeing Flaubert's handwriting... the way the writing slants up to the right... 

The illustrations are marvelous too. 

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chadadanielleKR wrote:

I just found an interesting link : MB manuscripts (sorry, in French) at which you could have a look.  It is related to the making of MB and it comes from the university of Rouen, Flaubert centre (Normandy).

 On the left there is a list of different words: just click on them and you get  nice pictures which were in the first editions of MB. If you know a bit more  French, you can get to the first drafts of MB, maps of the differents towns Flaubert created in MB, all kind of interesting info. Actually, just click everywhere and you'll understand more or less what you see...

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[Choisya]

Furthermore, Flaubert's sentences are like a river, they never stop, they go on and on, go back, repeat themselves and start again.

Yes, although they appeared long before James Joyce, they have a stream of consciousness feel to them. 

Thanks for this useful note Danielle. 

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chadadanielleKR wrote:

As a matter of fact, in the preface to the French edition of Madame Bovary I have started reading, there is a large passage about the liquid motif and a good explanation.

While writing MB, Flaubert was living in the library of the house bought by his father at the Croisset, in Normandy (sorry, I couldn't  find anything in English, but the pictures are evocative).  The house had its back against the hill and in front was the Seine. During more than four years, he hardly saw anyone except some friends on Sunday and he had his dinner face to face with his mother only.

Day after day, the fire burnt in the fireplace, the clock ticked and through the window: the river flowed and the boats went by. The writer of the preface says that Flaubert was strongly under the influence of such environment while writing MB. Flaubert says so himself in his letters.

Furthermore, Flaubert's sentences are like a river, they never stop, they go on and on, go back, repeat themselves and start again.

Dixit: Thierry Laget

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[Choisya]

Thanks a lot Danielle - they are great pictures!

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chadadanielleKR wrote:

I just found an interesting link : MB manuscripts (sorry, in French) at which you could have a look.  It is related to the making of MB and it comes from the university of Rouen, Flaubert centre (Normandy).

 On the left there is a list of different words: just click on them and you get  nice pictures which were in the first editions of MB. If you know a bit more  French, you can get to the first drafts of MB, maps of the differents towns Flaubert created in MB, all kind of interesting info. Actually, just click everywhere and you'll understand more or less what you see...

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[Choisya]

Yes, I have noticed those IBIS so did a search and came up with this essay on Flaubert's use of colours and flowers.

I had also wondered whether the Victorian Language of Flowers was in use in France at this time - perhaps Danielle could tell us?

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IBIS wrote:

Has anyone also noticed the abundant references to flowers in “Madame Bovary”? As an avid gardener, I couldn't help but notice that flowers come up again and again.

Flaubert consistently uses flower imagery in the novel. For example, Rodolphe . . . at the moment when he is about to abandon Emma, opens an old box in which he keeps his love letters from various ladies, and as he does so, ‘an odor of withered roses emanated from it’. Rodolphe’s insincerity to Emma is expressed in the scent of long-dead roses.

Flowers appear at the ball at Vaubyessard. Emma wears “three bouquets of pompom roses” on her dress. We also see “gentlemen with carnations in their buttonholes. . . talking to ladies round the fire”. The hair of many of the women at the ball “bore crowns, or bunches, or sprays of myosotis, jasmine, pomegranate flowers, [and] wheat sprays”. The red of the carnations in the buttonholes of the men is echoed in the red of the myosotis and pomegranate flowers.

When Emma meets her lovers, the flowers described set the tone for the entire scene. Rodolphe’s scenes are short, but very telling, if we pay attention the to flowers which appear in them. For instance, when Emma meets Rodolphe at the agricultural fair, they see some daisies. Rodolphe gives away his intentions when he says “Here are some pretty Easter daisies, and enough to provide oracles for all the lovers in the vicinity. . . . Shall I pick some?”. Emma replies, “Are you in love?”.

The next time Rodolphe appears, Emma places some roses in a vase. These roses set the tone of warning which Emma doesn’t get. When she expresses her undying love for him, he replies hesitantly.

Léon is also described by floral motifs. Before Léon meets Emma at the cathedral, he looks about the street and sees “the flowers that bordered the pavement: roses, jasmines, carnations, narcissus, and tuberoses”.

During their tour of the cathedral, Léon and Emma “breathed in the perfumes of the full-blown carnations and roses in the large vases”.

Emma, however, doesn’t seem to be surrounded by flowers herself. In places in the scene where flowers might be, we instead see artificial things. Elegant paper-and-cardboard constructions adorn her wedding cake, and the guests wear ribbons and medallions instead of the usual corsages.

Even Emma’s bouquet is made of paper flowers. “One day, when, in view of her departure, she was tidying a drawer, something pricked her finger. It was a wire of her wedding bouquet. The orange blossoms were yellow with dust and the silver-bordered satin ribbons were frayed at the edges. She threw it into the fire. . . . The shriveled paper petals, fluttering like black butterflies at the back of the stove, at last flew up the chimney."

The flowers are made of paper. The floral symbol of her marriage is artificial. I can't help but wonder if their artificiality foreshadowed her marriage to Charles.

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Message Edited by Choisya on 08-21-2009 09:12 AM

[Fozzie]

Here is a tidbit on the names in the novel, from the introduction in my B&N classics edition:

In a novel that is so technically modern and ground-breaking, it is interesting to note that Flaubert draws on the medieval slapstick tradition of naming his characters after their foibles:  the Mayor Tuvache ("you cow," in translation); the booster-ish technocrat Homais ("what man could be": "homme," the noun "man," cast, like a berb, in the future conditional tense); and Lheureux, the purveyor of expensive false dreams, his name taken from the French word for "happiness."

[Fozzie]

Proving once again that truth is stranger than fiction, apparently Madame Bovary was based on real life events, again from the introduction to my B&N classics edition.

Flaubert scholars agree that Madame Bovary's literal plot outline was drawn from the story of Eugene and Delphine Delamare, a local scandal.  According to Flaubert's first American biographer, Francis Steegmuller, Delphine, a country girl who had been educated at Rouen convent, married Eugene when she was seventeen and died of an overdose of poison nine years later.  Bored with her marriage to an adoring, unambitious husband, she had numerous affairs and amused herself in an avalanche of debt.  When the bills came due, afraid of facing ruin, she killed herself by taking poison.  ...

Like Charles, Eugene Delamare became an officer of public health after failing to pass all his medical exams.  Throughout his marriage, he had been blissfully unaware of Delphine's lovers and indebtedness.  He idolized her.  After Delphine's suicide, Eugene also died by his own hand, leaving behind their young daughter.

The last sentence caught my eye --- I assumed that the Charles in the novel died of a broken heart.  I did not think he committed suicide.  What do others think?

[Fozzie]

Here is Flaubert on his intentions, again from the introduction of my B&N classics edition.

In 1861, having dinner in Paris with his friends the Goncourt brothers, Flaubert explained:  "The story or plot of a novel is of no interest to me.  When I write a novel I have in mind rendering a color, a shade.  For example, in my Carthaginian novel [Salammbo, 1862], I want to do something purple.  In Madame Bovary all I was after was to render a special tone, that color of the moldiness of a wood-louse's existence" (Goncourt, The Goncourt Journals, p. 98).

Hmmm...not interested in plot.  I can see that.  I can also see how Emma's ennui could be portrayed as the "color of the moldiness of a wood-louse's existence."

[Lmfwhite]

I assumed that Charles died a natural death due to a broken and resigned heart with no will to live.  He died the day after he had spoken to Rudolphe and said he did not hold the affair against him....that only fate was to blame.  An autopsy did not reveal anything.  If it was a suicide, the autopsy would have revealed something.  

 "'I don't hold it against you!' he said. 'No, I don't hold it against you any more.'  He even added a lofty philosophical remark, the only one he had ever made in his life: 'Only fate is to blame.'

   The next day Charles sat down on the bench in the arbor.  The sun was shining in through the trellis; vine leaves cast their shadows on the gravel, the jasmine filled the air with its fragrance, the sky was blue, blister beetles were buzzing around the blooming lilies, and Charles's aching heart was swollen with vague amorous longings that made him suffer like an adolescent boy.

   At seven o'clock little Berthe, who had not seen him all afternoon, came to call him to dinner.

   His head was leaning back against the wall; his eyes were closed, his mouth was open, and in his hands he held a long lock of black hair.

   Thinking he was playing, she gave him a little push.  He fell to the ground.  He was dead.

   Thirty-six hours later Monsieur Canivet arrived, at the apothecary's request.  He performed an autopsy but found nothing."         

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Fozzie wrote:

The last sentence caught my eye --- I assumed that the Charles in the novel died of a broken heart.  I did not think he committed suicide.  What do others think?

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[dulcinea3]

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Lmfwhite wrote:

I assumed that Charles died a natural death due to a broken and resigned heart with no will to live.  He died the day after he had spoken to Rudolphe and said he did not hold the affair against him....that only fate was to blame.  An autopsy did not reveal anything.  If it was a suicide, the autopsy would have revealed something.  

 "'I don't hold it against you!' he said. 'No, I don't hold it against you any more.'  He even added a lofty philosophical remark, the only one he had ever made in his life: 'Only fate is to blame.'

   The next day Charles sat down on the bench in the arbor.  The sun was shining in through the trellis; vine leaves cast their shadows on the gravel, the jasmine filled the air with its fragrance, the sky was blue, blister beetles were buzzing around the blooming lilies, and Charles's aching heart was swollen with vague amorous longings that made him suffer like an adolescent boy.

   At seven o'clock little Berthe, who had not seen him all afternoon, came to call him to dinner.

   His head was leaning back against the wall; his eyes were closed, his mouth was open, and in his hands he held a long lock of black hair.

   Thinking he was playing, she gave him a little push.  He fell to the ground.  He was dead.

   Thirty-six hours later Monsieur Canivet arrived, at the apothecary's request.  He performed an autopsy but found nothing."         

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Fozzie wrote:

The last sentence caught my eye --- I assumed that the Charles in the novel died of a broken heart.  I did not think he committed suicide.  What do others think?

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I agree that I think that Charles died of natural causes.  Very interesting, though, how the other details of the true story tally with the novel.

[ConnieAnnKirk]

We're wrapping up MADAME BOVARY at the end of this week, so I thought a couple of you might like to comment on 1 or more of the discussion questions at the end of the B&N Edition.

We've focused a lot on language in our discussions, so here are some of the questions that ask about other things:  

1.)  Who is to blame for what happens to Madame Bovary?

2.)  Could a case be made that with a few surface changes Madame Bovary could be a novel set in an American suburb?

3.)  For those who are sensitive, does longing ever end?

What do you think?

[dulcinea3]

1.)  Who is to blame for what happens to Madame Bovary?

I would place a lot of the blame on Emma herself.  She could have been more realistic and tried to be satisfied with what she had.  She didn't have such a bad life - I don't think that they were rich, but they were reasonably comfortable, and her husband, while boring, adored her.  She knew that the novels she had read were fiction and portrayed an idealized world.  I imagine the characters in her novels never discussed finances or how they were paying for their luxurious lives.

However, I also place much of the blame on Lheureux.  He began weaving his web to ensnare her from the first time he came to sell her something.  She was a provincial farmer's daughter, and naive about legal matters.  He was easily able to get her further and further into debt (and Charles, too, once he became involved) without her ever really understanding how she would have to pay him back.  Then, he betrayed her by selling her debt to another lender who was (apparently) much more adamant on being paid back in a timely manner.  Lheureux was greedy, and didn't care whom he ruined along the way.